


No Secrets

by protego



Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: Cults, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Mansonesque, References to Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 11:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20581994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/protego/pseuds/protego
Summary: "He’s teaching them how to be free. He tells them that, when they’re all sitting in a circle in the living room."Snapshots from David's cult.





	No Secrets

When he meets her, her name is Joanna. Later, she’ll be Stevie, but her handmade sign says her name is Joanna Collins. It’s written in rainbow coloured handwriting – _Joanna Collins, CD $5_. There’s a small crowd of people listening to her play the guitar, and David stands at the back, listening. The people come and go, but he stays still. He’s watching her. She’s blonde, and her light hair tumbles over her shoulders. When she sings into the microphone, her accent is soft with a Southern twang.

As she sings about being hurt, having her heart broken, being betrayed, he dips into her mind. There’s pain there. Something about her dad kicking her out of the house. It’s mixed in with the pain of the songs, but it’s enough for David to understand. He waits for her to thank the small crowd, and put away her guitar, and then he walks over to her. She’s young. Can’t be much older than twenty.

“I liked your music,” he says, and she looks up. She’s bending down over her guitar case, struggling to get it closed.

“Thanks,” she says, uncertainly.

He smiles. “Here. Let me help you.” And he waves his hand and the case snaps shut by itself. Joanna blinks and stares at it, her mouth slightly open, her teeth grazing her bottom lip.

“How did –”

“I’m David.” He sits down on the sidewalk and crosses his legs, like he’s got all the time in the world. “So, your dad kicked you out, huh?”

* * *

There are more of them, eventually. Four or five people, homeless or runaways, all looking for something. And David gives it to them. Love, peace, acceptance. He sends it out of his head like a fog, like a cloud of psychic smoke, making them feel good, healing their old wounds and fixing their hurts. They all need that, and he needs it too. A kind of formless, ethereal, universal love. It’s better than the love Sydney gave him. It’s cleaner and purer – there’s no mess. There’s just acceptance and understanding.

When Timothy breaks down and tells him that he beat a guy half to death while he was high, David just nods. “We all make mistakes,” he says, gently. And he believes it. He believes in forgiveness. These people – _his_ people – just have to learn how to forgive themselves. You don’t need anyone else’s forgiveness. You’re the one who has to live with yourself, so you gotta forgive yourself.

* * *

At night, he can’t push her away. Sydney. In his dreams, she’s standing far away, back-lit by that purple light he saw in the future. He tries to call to her, but she just stands there, a faint smile playing on her lips, like she’s laughing at him. Sometimes she has one arm, and a pale stump where her forearm was. Sometimes she’s wearing her Clockworks outfit, so cute and innocent and doe-eyed. Sometimes she’s dressed all in black. But they’re all his Syd.

He calls to her, tells her he loves her, that he’s sorry. But she just looks at him, like she looked at him in the electric cage. _You drugged me and –_

* * *

It’s tricky to say when they become a commune. Suddenly, he’s collected ten of them, and they’re all living in a house meant for four people at most. Sleeping wherever, doing lines of coke off the floor, dancing in the living room, making love against bedroom walls. But there’s no judgement. David knows all their names, their stories. He’s walked into all their heads, soothed their suffering, plucked them off the streets and given them a home. He loves them. They’re his family. His new family.

* * *

Danielle is the youngest, and she’s the first one to call him daddy. She’s resting her head on his lap, and he’s stroking her hair absentmindedly. He’s drifting in and out of her mind as she falls asleep, totally at peace, safe and loved. Everything feels unreal, far away, spacey. Like they’re both on the edge of sleep.

“You’re a better daddy than mine ever was,” Danielle says, quietly.

Later, when he talks to the group, he says, “You know your daddy loves you very much,” and they all nod in unison. “We know you do, Daddy,” they say.

* * *

He’s teaching them how to be free. He tells them that, when they’re all sitting in a circle in the living room. Louise is leaning her head on Peter’s shoulder, Matilda is braiding flowers into Annie’s hair. There’s no real space between them – they’re all one. There’s a heaviness in the air, a laziness that comes from secondhand drug smoke and doing nothing all day.

“I’m opening your minds,” he says, resting his elbows on his knees and letting his hands hang down loosely. He looks at each one of them in the eye, so they feel noticed, special. They need that. “You all know there’s more to life than just this. Just what we see. I’ve shown you.” His voice is slow, soft, unobtrusive. He can feel their minds, saturated with their love like wet sponges, fuzzy and blurred at the edges, already more open than they were before.

“It’s hard, to let go of the reality you know,” he says. “But I’m gonna help you.” He smiles, and they smile back, mirroring him. “I’m the magic man.”

* * *

_You think they love you? Please. They’re just using you for drugs and sex – They just want a roof over their heads – _

“Shut up,” David hisses.

“Who are you talking to, Daddy?” Molly asks.

He takes a deep, calming, breath, and runs his hands through his hair. “No one,” he says.

* * *

David has the idea to give them new names when Samuel joins. Samuel says that his name is Samuel, but he prefers to go by Sam. And it hits David like a lighting bolt. _Why don’t we give him a new name? They’re gonna be new people. We’re helping them_. So, he smiles at Samuel, and says, “How would you like a new name?”

It won’t become a formal ceremony until later. At first, he just gives them nicknames that he comes up with. Samuel is Mew, like the sound a cat makes; Peter is Pan, like the character; Brendan is Bowie, like David Bowie. Everyone gets a special name, chosen for them.

They all love their new names, and wear them with pride, saying them in emphasised ways, like children playing pretend, smiling, their eyes shining.

* * *

Loolabug isn’t doing anything when David stops her. She’s just drifting through the house, wearing a pair of light pink sunglasses she found on a garbage run. The others are all sitting on couches, lying on the floor, but David can feel them watching him, because they’re always watching him when he walks among them. They can’t help it. He feels their minds sharpen when he walks in, like they’re suddenly more alive.

David raises his hands, palms out, to Loolabug. _Copy me_, he tells her, without moving his lips. She raises her hands and presses them against his. He laces their fingers together and looks right into her eyes, his gaze going out of focus. And he moves their hands to the left and the right slowly, and then up as far as she can reach, and then out in a wide arc. The movements are deliberate at first, but his hands suddenly jerk up or down, pulling Loolabug’s with him. Everyone is staring at them.

He let go of her hands and their arms fall to their sides. He turns to address the room. “We’ve gotta be together,” he says, in his peaceable way. “We’re a family. No secrets.”

* * *

Now they’re a family, they need rules. David sits at the base of the tree growing out the floor of the living room, and they all crowd in front of him, sitting on cushions and lying on each other’s laps and sprawled on the floor. He’s sitting a little higher, looking down at them. His people. His flock. They all watch him, expectant.

They’ve all been given new names. Joanna is Stevie, after Stevie Nicks. Danielle is Dolly. Timothy is Mouse, because he twitches. A redheaded girl David found searching for food in a dumpster is Fox now. Out with the old, in with the new, like a tide. Like being reborn into the world.

He’s still David, but he’s better now. He’s not the same David who cowered away from a fat, grey demon with yellow eyes. _You don’t see him?_ He doesn’t wonder what’s real and what’s not anymore. He knows there’s no line between the two. It’s simply a matter of perspective. Where everyone else sees people, he sees shadows.

He tells his family the rules gently, so they understand.

No secrets. Keep your mind open to anything. Leave your old life behind – there’s no _before_. Don’t get weighed down by material possessions, because nothing lasts.

“And love,” David says, “We need that. Love.”


End file.
